"Everything was banned. You're just allowed to eat and drink and sleep and die," says Qasem.
BBC
The BBC's guide says his fingers were chopped off as torture
Punishments at Saydnaya were frequent and brutal.
All of the people we spoke to described being beaten with different implements - metal staffs, cables, electric sticks.
"They would enter the room and start to beat us all over our bodies. I would stay still, watching and waiting for my turn," Adnan, who was arrested in 2019 on accusations of kidnapping and killing a regime soldier, recalls.
"Every night, we would thank God that we were still alive. Every morning, we would pray to God, please take our souls so we can die in peace."
Adnan and two of the other newly released inmates said they were sometimes forced to sit with their knees towards their foreheads and a vehicle tyre placed over their bodies with a stick wedged inside so they couldn't move, before beatings were administered.
Forms of punishment were varied.
Qasem says he was held upside down by two prison officers in a barrel of water until he thought he was going to "choke and die".
"I saw death with my own eyes," he says. "They would do this if you woke up in the night, or we spoke in a loud voice, or if we had a problem with any of the other prisoners."
